Yesterday, the conservative National Association of Scholars released a toolkit for citizens concerned about the penetration of American colleges and universities by the Chinese Communist government’s Confucius Institutes.

Confucius Institutes are Chinese government-sponsored centers located at more than 100 American colleges and universities. The National Association of Scholar’s 2017 report, Outsourced to China: Confucius Institutes and Soft Power in American Higher Education, found that these Institutes gloss over the Chinese Communist Party’s authoritarian rule and educate a generation of American students to know little more of China than the regime’s official history.

Rachelle Peterson, director of research projects at the National Association of Scholars, spent a year and a half studying Confucius Institutes. She found they misled students about China’s history and pressured American scholars to keep quiet about China’s unsavory policies. The Chinese director of one Institute told Peterson that if a student asked about Tiananmen Square, she would “show a picture and point out the beautiful architecture.” Another stripped faculty doors of banners referencing Taiwan.

Ms. Peterson says Confucius Institutes are not just for language teaching and cultural exchanges. She completed a study of 12 Confucius Institutes in the United States and concluded the Chinese government uses the institutes to shape students’ perceptions of China, build soft power, and intimidate American scholars into keeping quiet about China’s sub-par human rights record. In their less guarded moments, Chinese officials admit this. Li Changchun, former head of propaganda for the Chinese Communist Party, called Confucius Institutes “an important part of China’s overseas propaganda set-up.”

Confucius Institutes are also, by the way, the subject of an FBI investigation.

FBI Director Christopher Wray revealed in recent months that his agency is taking “investigative steps” regarding Confucius Institutes. Wray was responding to questions from Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL), who called Confucius Institutes “complicit” in China’s larger efforts “to covertly influence public opinion” in the United States. Earlier this month, Rubio sent a letter to Florida schools, urging them to shut down their Confucius Institutes. (You can read the full text of Rubio’s letter through this link.)

In our article, “Red Chinese Penetrating American Colleges And Universities” we suggested that if one of your state’s colleges or universities hosts a Confucius institute or if you are an alumnus of such a college or university, or the university or college where your children are studying hosts a Confucius Institute you send the chief administrator a version of Senator Rubio’s letter to Florida colleges and universities.

Now our friends at the National Association of Scholars have made the job of fighting Red Chinese influence operations at America’s colleges and universities even easier by assembling an online “toolkit.”

Here are the steps you can take by using the NAS online tools kit:

Send a letter to the president of a college with a Confucius Institute.

Confucius Institutes undermine intellectual freedom, disseminate propaganda, and serve the purposes of a foreign government. NAS urges all colleges and universities to close their Confucius Institutes at once.

NAS has proposed six policy changes to address the rise of Confucius Institutes. We are pleased that the Foreign Influence Transparency Act, introduced in March by Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Representative Joe Wilson (R-SC), would enact two of our recommendations. Representative Seth Moulton (D-MA) has also urged Confucius Institutes in Massachusetts to close. But no legislation has been passed, and much remains to be done to address the threat of Confucius Institutes.

Confucius Institutes subvert American higher education to the interests of a foreign authoritarian government. Imagine the outcry if the U.S. federal government demanded the authority to choose the curriculum and vet all teachers for courses on America. Yet that is exactly what American colleges and universities permit China to do for courses at Confucius Institutes.

If you write an op-ed or letter to the editor, please let Rachelle Peterson know at [email protected] so that NAS can share it on social media.

Most conservatives recognize Communist China as an economic and military adversary of the United States, but only recently have Americans begun to recognize the ideological battle the Chinese Communists are waging on America’s college campuses. You can help fight and win this battle by using the National Association of Scholars’ concerned citizen toolkit to rid our colleges or universities of Confucius Institutes.